Why is Bioware so silent on major gear issues from 5.10?

Is your name Eric?

Its certainly possible. Why would that matter? I didnt answer his question, but posed a question back at him that perhaps he didnt consider before he asked his.

Someone once asked if they ought to call him "Charles." Not sure what they meant by that though.

There are three types of outcome Bioware can deliver when choosing to make changes:

1) It benefits Players in some way.
2) It is neutral.
3) It is detrimental to Players in some way.

1) is very nearly always a correct choice; happier players spend more money, play longer and stay longer.
2) can be good or bad depending on conditional factors.
3) is always a wrong choice: ticked off players play less, stay less, a pay less.

Guess which one Bioware usually goes for.

Now you can understand why we have 6 servers instead of 200+.

All The Best

I'll just quote this for emphasis. Hits the nail on the head and explains why I spend 6 days a week in ESO and 1 day a week in SWTOR. I am in SWTOR only for my raid team not for the game anymore. In general, the end game sucks rocks. IF they add a level cap increase and yet more gear to grind, I'm not sure I'll stick around. The grind to get back to doing what we've been doing for years now just isn't worth it.

Thats a very simple way to look at it. Each player feels differently about every change based on how it impacts their personal situation. If slot locking makes gearing and optimizing take longer, as intended, it benefits some players and is worse for others, relative to each other.

Oh I know what the agenda was, make gearing into more a of grind, forcing people to need multiple characters to properly gear one. It's an attempt to make people play and grind more but it is an extremely lazy way of doing it and frankly I am very confidently assuming that the constant turn towards more and more mindless grinding is going end up causing more people to leave than it is to play.

The reason I want Eric to answer is I want them to admit they did something purely to make people grind and try to lazily make the game "longer". Of course they wont say that and so wont answer me I'm not surprised, just trying to make a point.

That's a valid point.

If a player cares nothing about stats or adjusting their stat lines with highly customizable mods then they would be fine with locked in mods.

A player who likes customizing their stat lines and having greater control over their stats would prefer having movable mods.

Guess it depends on what kind of game SWTOR wants to be. Easy and little focus on details, or more of a thinking person's game where there's options and choices that allow a lot of customization.

Sadly for me, I prefer having lots of control over my mods and I enjoy being able to tinker with my stats easily by moving mods around. I like options and choices in games, and over time SWTOR has been phasing out that sort of game play hence my dissatisfaction with it.

Everything is designed to funnel you directly into very set systems whether it's gearing, conquest, etc. All these facets have been altered to remove a lot of the variations in gameplay by the players. I guess it's easier to design and develop cookie-cutter gear pieces that have immovable mods in it, so they went that route. Less moving pieces so to speak.


Good luck completing this quest.

You'd need an active community manager or team to answer any personal concerns and that never happens openly on the forums. Maybe you would have better luck sending a PM seeing open chat never has any engaging conversations from any representatives of this game.

I doubt it will make many people who are interested in the genre leave, at least not on its own. Its a common part of mmos, and is expected.

Actually, I think you identify the precise reason why the individual's point you quote is not valid, but inane. Here's why:

Some players don't care about stats, customization, or optimization. That's perfectly fine. But if they didn't care before, and they don't care now -- that is what we call a constant. They benefit in no way under the new system because there is zero impact on them. It's not that it s a good change or is a bad change -- it is an immaterial and irrelevant one that will likely not even be noticed because they weren't interested in swapping mods / enh to begin with.

Some players on the other hand like customization and optimization. For them, this is a new variable -- one which dramatically increases the grind in some cases. They are being punished because some players don't care or are too lazy to do math.

The argument that optimization and customization is still possible is pure specious claptrap. Here's why:

The only intellectually honest argument that I can think of to prevent swapping of mods / enh is to make balancing high-end PvE content easier on the devs. Why? Simple, because there are fewer variables they have to account for in player capabilities.

But as a certain poster has pointed out -- optimization and customization is, in fact, still possible. So that renders the high-end PvE content balancing argument moot.

This leads to one inescapable and inexorable conclusion: It is designed to increase the grind. In so doing, it annoys players. But in no way does it benefit players who never optimized before and have no intention to do so now -- it is a complete wash. But I think it is clear it annoys other players to a sufficient degree that it adds another straw on the proverbial camel's back. And the poor camel's back can only handle so many straws.

Grinds may be an inherent part of MMORPG's, but there are limits.

Dasty